Model Citizen
MODEL CITIZEN is an interview podcast that explores big, new ideas in politics and policy with captivating original thinkers ... premised on the idea that we have a duty as citizens and neighbors to build our mental models of the world with as little error, bias, and lunacy as possible. Guests discuss how they've arrived at their conclusions, mistakes they've made, people and methods they trust and distrust, and how they've changed their minds. Hosted by WILL WILKINSON, New York Times contributing opinion writer and former US Politics correspondent for The Economist
This episode marks the beginning of a new chapter for Model Citizen. With the power of a single mighty tweet, I've broken off the shackles of formal institutional affiliation. So we're on our own. Let's just say it's been a hell of a week. In that time, I've launched a daily newsletter, also called Model Citizen, which I've integrated with this podcast. If you'd like to support me, and the burgeoning Model Citizen media empire, please consider subscribing at modelcitizen.substack.com. It's just $5.99 a month. In addition to thought-provoking writing delivered straight to your inbox, subscribers get audio versions of articles, special episodes of the Model Citizen podcast and more. But on with the show!
This week's guest, Richard Florida, is one of our leading authorities on cities and urban life. Richard is author of a shelf of books, including the Rise of the Creative Class and, most recently, the New Urban Crisis. In this episode, we talk about the extent to which work-from-home arrangements will or won't stick after the pandemic, whether San Francisco faces the fate of urban powerhouses of yesteryear, like Pittsburgh and Detroit, how self-reinforcing selection effects have made academia stifling, and more. Richard Florida is University Professor at the University of Toronto's School of Cities and Rotman School of Management, as well as a Distinguished Fellow at NYU's Schack School of Real Estate. And, as you'll see, he's also a hell of a nice guy.
Readings
The Rise of the Creative Class by Richard Florida
Who’s Your City by Richard Florida
Jason Rentfrow’s Google Scholar page
Triumph of the City by Ed Glaeser
Jonathan Miller on Real Estate after the Pandemic, Bloomberg Masters in Business podcast
Prison Notebooks by Antonio Gramsci
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Credits
Host: Will Wilkinson (@willwilkinson)
Music: Dig Deep by RW Smith
I never thought I'd see a seditious mob of Americans sack the Capitol building as Congress counted electoral votes. But, then again, I never thought the president of the United States would turn out to be a malignant narcissist who lies about everything all the time. The insurrectionists who sacked the capitol were fueled by lies. One thing that struck me when Trump became president was how other Republican officials didn't seem to care all the much that he lied all the time. By the end of his presidency, practically the entire GOP was willing to enthusiastically embrace Trump's biggest lie yet: that he'd won an election he obviously lost. And, of course, right wing media was there the entire time, amplifying and spreading Trump's lies, whether they were petty vanities or outright seditious. Partisan bias is one thing. Blaring propaganda like a foghorn, completely indifferent to the truth, is different animal altogether. That's why I wanted to talk to my old friend Matthew Sheffield. Matthew was one of the founders of Newsbusters, one of the first conservative sites to devote itself entirely to the exposing liberal media bias and left-wing "fake news." At a certain point, the scales fell from Matthew's eyes and he realized that the mainstream media was at least trying to tell truth, but the right-wing media wasn't trying to do anything at all but stick it to left. I think the inside perspective is critical here. One of the biggest biases of the mainstream media is ignorance of the way the conservative media and messaging machine actually works. Matthew really knows what he's talking about. In addition to founding Newsbuster, he was the founding online managing editor of the Washington Examiner. More recently, he's covered the right and rightwing media for Salon, hosts a podcast called Theory of Change and has written a series of penetrating Twitter threads about the conservative media ecosystem that have earned him interviews on a bunch of radio shows as well as the New York Times.
Readings
NYT interview with Matthew Sheffield
Twitter thread on right-wing media
Twitter thread on meaning, loss and Christian supremacism in modern conservatism
How Right-Wing Media Fuels the Political Divide, On Point, WBUR - Boston
Matthew Sheffield's Theory of Change Podcast
Credits
Host: Will Wilkinson (@willwilkinson)
Audio engineer: Ray Ingegneri
Music: Dig Deep by RW Smith
Model Citizen is a production of the Niskanen Center (@niskanencenter)
To support this podcast or any of the Niskanen Center's programs, visit: https://niskanencenter.org/donate
This week's guest, Christopher Federico, is co-author (along with Christopher Johnston and Howard Lavine) of one of the most illuminating books I've ever read in the field of political psychology, "Open Versus Closed: Personality, Identity, and the Politics of Redistribution." The American electorate is divided by geography, but also personality. "Open Versus Closed" explores the ways in which personality differences do and don't predict our political views. Christopher and I talk about all that good stuff an more, including a discussion that I found really interesting about the extent to which rising prosperity is inherently polarizing because it reveals and amplifies our natural differences simply by making it easier for us to realize our capacities and select into professions and communities filled with people like us. We also explore whether its easier to extend respect and empathy across ideological and partisan lines when you believe that people generally aren't personally responsible for their personalities or political opinions.
Christopher Federico is Professor of Political Science and Psychology at the University of Minnesota. He's the Director of the University of Minnesota’s Center for the Study of Political Psychology and Vice President of the International Society of Political Psychology.
Readings
Open Versus Closed: Personality, Identity, and the Politics of Redistribution by Christopher Federico, Christopher Johnston and Howard Lavine
"The Personality Basis of Political Preferences" by Christopher Federico
"The contingent, contextual nature of the relationship between needs for security and certainty and political preferences: Evidence and implications" by Christopher Federico and Ariel Malka
Christopher M. Federico at Google Scholar
Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity by Lilliana Mason
"How racially resentful working-class whites fled the Democratic Party — before Donald Trump" by Michael Tesler
Credits
Host: Will Wilkinson (@willwilkinson)
Audio engineer: Ray Ingegneri
Music: Dig Deep by RW Smith
Model Citizen is a production of the Niskanen Center (@niskanencenter)
To support this podcast or any of the Niskanen Center's programs, visit: https://niskanencenter.org/donate
In my most philosophical moods (and I'm usually in a pretty philosophical mood) I tend to see pretty much anything as a window onto the cosmos. But I'd never considered my cotton slacks as a window onto the forward march of human progress. That is, until I read Virginia Postrel's new book, "The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World."
Did you know that the microbial theory of disease starts with silkworm farming? That the origins of computing have something to do with the algorithmic nature of weaving? That double-entry bookkeeping and modern finance are creatures of the textile trade? Well, I do now, thanks to Virginia's fascinating new book. We talk about all that, as well as the nature of the human desires for protection, comfort, pleasure, novelty and status that drive the whole story forward. Could whatever you're listening to this on now even exist if we didn't care about so much about pants? I don't know, but "The Fabric of Civilization" got me wondering.
In addition to this book, Virginia Postrel is author of The Future and Its Enemies, the Substance of Style, and the Power of Glamour. Reason magazine under her editorship in the late '90s and early Oughts was a big formative influence on me and I count myself lucky to have her as a friend. She is also, I should mention, a member of the Niskanen Center's board of advisors.
Readings
The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World by Virginia Postrel
Credits
Host: Will Wilkinson (@willwilkinson)
Audio engineer: Ray Ingegneri
Music: Dig Deep by RW Smith
Model Citizen is a production of the Niskanen Center (@niskanencenter)
To support this podcast or any of the Niskanen Center's programs, visit: https://niskanencenter.org/donate
The presidential election once again made clear that there is a striking and surprising relationship between population density and party vote share. The salience of the American electorate's polarization on density renewed interest in my 2019 paper, The Density Divide: Urbanization, Polarization, and Populist Backlash, which explores how the logic of long-term urbanization explains the density divide by spatially segregating the national population along the lines of ethnicity, personality, and education. A few listeners mentioned that they'd like to hear me talk about the paper on the podcast, and discuss whether there are new insights to be gleaned from Biden's win in the 2020 election, so here it is: an improvised two-hour monologue on the Density Divide.
Readings
The Density Divide: Urbanization, Polarization, and Populist Backlash by Will Wilkinson
Audio Version of the Density Divide by Will Wilkinson
Who's Your City by Richard Florida
Jason Rentfrow on Google Scholar
Why Cities Lose: The Deep Roots of the Urban-Rural Political Divide by Jonathan Rodden
The New Geography of Jobs by Enrico Moretti
Credits
Host: Will Wilkinson (@willwilkinson)
Audio engineer: Ray Ingegneri
Music: Dig Deep by RW Smith
Model Citizen is a production of the Niskanen Center (@niskanencenter)
To support this podcast or any of the Niskanen Center's programs, visit: https://niskanencenter.org/donate
American democracy has gone more than a little awry. Nearly 300,000 Americans are dead in no small measure due to the failure of Congress to implement a nationwide testing and tracing regime. But this failure hasn't much hurt the incumbent Republican Party. The GOP gained ground in the House. They may hold their Senate Majority. Trump wasn't repudiated nearly as decisively as many of us wish, and he's still out there spreading outrageous lies about the credibility of the election he lost.
I think there's a connection between the brokenness of our democracy and the deadliness of the pandemic. That's what I talk about in this episode with Danielle Allen -- though I never quite managed to put it that way. I got to know Danielle by working on pandemic response policy with a group she was leading. This is how I discovered that Danielle Allen is no mere mortal. She's a distinguished classicist, political philosopher, and theorist of democracy. I knew that already. What I didn't know is that she's also an exemplary practitioner of the art of collective self-government. Within weeks of the pandemic's onset, Danielle had assembled a working group of epidemiologists, economists, computer scientists, entrepreneurs, and policy experts through the auspices of Harvard's Safra Center for Ethics, which she runs. Danielle seemed to immediately assimilate everything everyone else had spent a lifetime learning. She was able to get everybody to happily work together in complementary roles. And she motivated us to turn out a set of impressive practical pandemic response plans at an incredible pace. Her effortless intelligence, openness to others' views, easygoing but authoritative leadership, and inspiring level of energy and drive made me feel a little like I was in a pick-up game with LeBron James. I guess that's how you get to be the James Bryant Conant University Professor at Harvard, which is what she is.
In this episode we touch on why we couldn't get the Senate to take up legislation funding the sort of testing regime that works, what we can do to make our democracy more responsive and less dysfunctional, and why Danielle loves the U.S. Constitution, despite the concessions to slave states that continue to plague our political system. I regret that we didn't have time to go longer and deeper, but we should all be grateful that Danielle is working overtime trying to save our lives and democracy ... which means that she always has another meeting.
Readings
Roadmap to Pandemic Resilience by Danielle Allen, et al.
Pandemic Resilience: Getting It Done by Danielle Allen, et al.
The best way out of this pandemic is to massively scale up testing. Here’s how to do it by Danielle Allen, Washington Post
The Brutal Clarity of the Trump-McConnell Plan to Protect Businesses by Will Wilkinson, New York Times
We Know How to Beat the Virus. This Is How Republicans Can Do It. by Puja Ohlhaver and Will Wilkinson, New York Times
Our Common Purpose: Reinventing Democracy in the 21st Century by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Commission for the Practice of Democratic Citizenship
The Flawed Genius of the Constitution by Danielle Allen, The Atlantic
Credits
Host: Will Wilkinson (@willwilkinson)
Audio engineer: Ray Ingegneri
Music: Dig Deep by RW Smith
Model Citizen is a production of the Niskanen Center (@niskanencenter)
To support this podcast or any of the Niskanen Center's programs, visit: https://niskanencenter.org/donate
Donald Trump may be going away, but the coalition, movement, and intellectual tendencies that grew up around him aren't. For many, Trump seemed to herald a new dawn for reactionary conservative nationalism political thought aligned against pluralism, social justice and even liberal democracy itself. In a fascinating series of essays for Niskanen and the Bulwark, political theorist Laura Field has been probing to the philosophical underpinnings of the emerging illiberal right more insightfully than just about anyone.
In this episode, we discuss the underlying assumptions animating thinkers like Patrick Deneen, Sohrab Ahmari, Adrian Vermuele, Yoram Hazony and Attorney General Bill Barr, among others. Why do they think liberal democracy is self-undermining? Why are they hostile to multicultural liberal pluralism. How do they think they know that liberalism leaves us empty, alienated and estranged from a profound human need for deep social connection? Are these guys like Captain Ahab on a deranged and futile hunt to destroy meaninglessness? We talk about all that and lots more, including whether left-wing postmodern thought is destroying liberal education. (Hint: It isn't.)
Laura field is a Senior Fellow at the Niskanen Center and has taught political theory and the history of political thought as faculty at Rhodes College, Georgetown and American University, where she is currently a scholar in residence.
Readings
Meet the Reocons by Laura Field
What the Reactionary Right Gets Dead Wrong about Liberal Democracy by Laura Field
Love and Loyalty in the "Liberalocracy" by Laura Field
Dear Republicans: Welcome to the New Establishment by Laura Field
Why Liberalism Failed by Patrick Deneen
Moby-Dick; or, the Whale by Herman Melville
Credits
Host: Will Wilkinson (@willwilkinson)
Audio engineer: Ray Ingegneri
Music: Dig Deep by RW Smith
Model Citizen is a production of the Niskanen Center (@niskanencenter)
To support this podcast or any of the Niskanen Center's programs, visit: https://niskanencenter.org/donate
Successful societies run on trust, but trust in America's institutions and electoral system is in the pits. Partisans distrust each other and polarization has turned politics into war. Kevin Vallier's new book Trust in a Polarized Age applies empirical research on the causes and consequences social and political trust to develop a distinctive conception of liberalism. He offers a novel argument for a number of core liberal rights, free markets, the welfare state, and democratic institutions on the basis of their contribution to trust and its benefits.
I'd like to say Kevin and I discussed his book in detail, giving you a clear overview of his argument, but that's not really what happened. Kevin and I are old philosophy buddies, our thinking has developed quite a bit over the decade or so we've known each other, and we're both pretty digressive. So what we ended up doing here is sort of catching up through a meandering conversation that always hovers near the themes of his excellent book, but leaves the exact contours of its original, rigorous argument a bit vague. Personally, I prefer to listening to smart people think out loud over a book report, so maybe it's for the best.
This one's pretty long and and it's hard to summarize. But if you'd like to listen to a pro-life Christian political philosopher and a pro-choice atheist policy wonk speculate about what would happen if Roe v. Wade were struck down while agreeing that our acrimonious politics owes something to the anti-democratic nature of the Supreme Court, you'll have to stick around for awhile. We also take a bit of time to remember the great political philosopher Jerry Gaus, who recently passed away and meant a lot to both of us. Kevin Vallier is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Bowling Green State University and the director of Bowling Green's program in Philosophy, Politics, Economics, and Law.
Trust in a Polarized Age by Kevin Vallier
The Order of Public Reason by Gerald Gaus
The Tyranny of the Ideal: Justice in a Diverse Society by Gerald Gaus
Host: Will Wilkinson (@willwilkinson)
Audio engineer: Ray Ingegneri
Music: Dig Deep by RW Smith
Model Citizen is a production of the Niskanen Center (@niskanencenter)
To support this podcast or any of the Niskanen Center's programs, visit: https://niskanencenter.org/donate
PRE-ELECTION SPECIAL EPISODE!
Opposition to Donald Trump has been a unifying force for Democrats. Progressive and moderate factions of the party set aside their differences during the race, but what happens if Joe Biden wins? How do Democrats maintain cohesion when progressives are gaining strength and formerly Republican college-educated whites stream into the party? What happens to a post-Trump GOP? Does it continue to hang together or split up into rival factions vying for control of the party?
Steven Teles, a Johns Hopkins political scientist and Niskanen senior fellow, argues we're heading for a de-polarizing era of party factionalization. In this episode we talk about Teles' essay in National Affairs, "The Future is Faction" and the final chapter of his new book "Never Trump: The Revolt of the Conservative Elites" (both with co-author Robert Saldin), both of which analyze the prospects of intra-party division, weakening control by leadership, and the renewed possibility of bipartisan coalitions and moderation in policymaking.
"The Future is Faction" by Steven Teles and Robert Saldin, National Affairs
Never Trump: Revolt of the Conservative Elites by Steven Teles and Robert Saldin
Host: Will Wilkinson (@willwilkinson)
Audio engineer: Ray Ingegneri
Music: Dig Deep by RW Smith
Model Citizen is a production of the Niskanen Center (@niskanencenter)
To support this podcast or any of the Niskanen Center's programs, visit: https://niskanencenter.org/donate
If winning the most votes made you president, Joe Biden would have it in the bag by now. But voters don't get to pick the president here in America. The Electoral College does. Which is why Biden's supporters can't rest easy, even though it's a lock that he'll win the popular vote. Donald Trump, who lost the popular vote by nearly 3 million votes, owes his presidency this baffling, archaic kludge of an institution and he's still got an outside shot at a second term because of it. So why did our blessed Founders saddle us with the Electoral College? Why is it still there, despite many efforts through the years to reshape or kill it?
This week's guest, Alexander Keyssar wrote a book, "Why Do We Still Have the Electoral College?" to answer precisely this question. We discuss how the Electoral College was a makeshift afterthought compromise at the Constitutional Convention, how its half-baked rules of the Electoral College almost immediately threw presidential elections into disarray, how it spurred the creation of political parties (despite the Founder's intentions), why the states converged on winner-take-all rules for the allocation of electoral votes rather than settling on district-based or proportional schemes, and much more. Why did later attempts to replace the Electoral College with a national popular vote fail? Are future attempts incredibly unlikely, or is it much more likely than you think? We talk about that, too.
Alexander Keyssar is the Matthew W. Stirling Jr. Professor of History and Social Policy at the Harvard Kennedy school for government. He's the author of many distinguished works of history, including the "The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States," a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.
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Why Do We Still Have the Electoral College by Alexander Keyssar
Host: Will Wilkinson (@willwilkinson)
Audio engineer: Ray Ingegneri
Music: Dig Deep by RW Smith
Model Citizen is a production of the Niskanen Center (@niskanencenter)
To support this podcast or any of the Niskanen Center's programs, visit: https://niskanencenter.org/donate
"Faster Growth, Fairer Growth: Policies for a High Road, High Performance Economy" by Brink Lindsey and Samuel Hammond
